co+labo is an Architecture and Urban Design Laboratory at Keio University, Tokyo. It is based in the Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Systems Design Engineering
co+labo is involved in education, research and design-research in the fields of architecture and urban design.

27 December 2015

co+labo radović 2015@co+labo ends with bonenkai - the end of the year party at Harajuku

The end of the year at co+labo was, as always, marked by traditional Japanese bonenkaiwhich, translated literally, means forget-the-year-party. But, in and around our laboratory, in 2015 there was a lot to remember. Last year was full of events, the intensity of which we hope to see flowing into the New Year - successful international workshops and symposia, award-winning architectural and urban design competitions, fresh ideas coming from an intensified exchange at both student and staff levels, new research projects - all of which combined made our dream about strong international architecture and urban design programme feel closer to reality than ever before. For us, the end of the year gathering was, thus, a please-do-not-forget-this-year-party, an opportunity for current co+labo members, graduates and associates to get together and to welcome a group of new Keio undergraduates who will be joining co+laboradović in 2016: Morimoto Mei, Mikogami Mayuko, Takasu Yukie, Kobayashi Daisuke, Onishi Keitaro and Yamashita Shohei. Special guests were co+labo's Kira Horie, who is now doing her Masters ar Harvard GSD, and Akitaka Suzuki, a first Keio-Politecnico di Milano Double Degree student in the field of architecture and urban design.

26 December 2015

co+labo radović a successful completion of the Keio-PoliMi Symposium in Milano

A joint Symposium, Workshop and small, focused group meetings related to the future of growing collaboration between Keio and Politecnico di Milano in the fields of architecture and urbanism, which started with an initiative od Professors Marco Imperadori and Darko Radović were a great success. Inspirational Smart Communities Symposium has presented immense resources and potential for collaboration in the fields associated with production of space at two universities and, above all, made obvious that the time for intensification and diversification of collaboration has come. Professor Giovanni Azzone, the Rector of Politecnico di Milano, opened the main day of the event by announcing the commitment to strategic partnership between two universities in the fields of architecture and urbanism. It was great to see the initiative which started at co+labo evolve into the potentially university-wide project.

Since 2009, co+labo was
at the forefront of the struggle to make architecture and urban design at Keio, the oldest university in Japan, strong and truly international. We made our ambitious aims known at La Biennale di Achittetura in Venice in 2010, when Keio
Professors Radović, Sejima and Kobayashi joined forces to establish IKI
- International Keio Institute for Architecture and
Urbanism. IKI was, and it remains (at) the heart of co+labo ... or the other way round.

8. 2010: Hitoshi Abe (UCLA), Yaishi Ikeda (Keio), Wang Shi (Academy of Art, Hangzhou), Heinrich Wolf (NoeroWolf, Sth Africa), Shun Kanda (MIT), Kazuyo Sejima (IKI, Design Director), Hiroto Kobayashi (IKI Managing Director) and Darko Radović (IKI International Director) at the IKI Symposium in Venice.With IKI at heart, we have staged numerous
numerous international research, educational and design-research workshops,
fieldworks, Symposia and Conferences, hosted major research project Measuring
the non-Measurable - Mn'M and did our best to contribute to better thinking and
making good architecture and urbanism worldwide, in Asia, Australia and
Europe. With truly top-global strategic partners such as Politecnico di Milano, the time to turn that dream into
reality has come.

09 December 2015

In the period 15-19.12, Politecnico di Milano and Keio University will conduct a joint Symposium, Workshop and small, focused group meetings related to the future of our growing collaboration in the fields of architecture and urbanism. The forthcoming Smart Communities Symposium will build upon concentrated efforts by Professors Marco Imperadori and Darko Radović, which started from idealistic, brave ideas about the best possible ways for two universities to collaborate and advance the fields of architecture and urban design. Over the years, Politecnico and Keio established fruitful exchange of students and staff,flow of guest lectures, and started Double Degree programme in those fields. By hosting professors Imperadori, Masera, Grecchi at Keio, receiving Politecnico exchange students, Colistra, Spallina and Nastasi and sending our own best, Sasamura and Suzuki,co+labo was central to those efforts. In 2015, professors Davisi Boontharm and Darko Radović visited PoliMi, to make sure that two institutions are ready to advance to the next level, research collaboration within the Top Global University Smart Communities initiative.All that, combined with enthusiasm of the colleagues and Politecnico, made the December 2015 Smart Communities Symposium Symposium, Workshop and the rest possible. At this blog, we will keep you updated about our afforest to make thinking about Smart Cities - smarter.

29 November 2015

On Tuesday 1 December, within our Theory of Architecture and Urban Designprogramme, Paula Jaén Caparrós, co+labo's exchange PhD researcher from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, will give first of her two lectures which focus at some of the key aspects of her investigations of architecture in Japan.

As always, if you are not far from Yagami Campus on Tuesday afternoon, please join us for this inspiring and informative talk. Paula's next lecture will be on 18 December, within the course on Advanced Sustainable Architecture and Urbanism.

18 November 2015

On Tuesday 24 November co+labois organising the third and final in the series of international guest lectures within our Theory of Architecture and Urban Designprogramme in 2015. Professors Manuela Grecchi and Marco Imperadori, the Vice Rector and the Rector's Representative for East and South East Asia at Politecnico di Milano. Marco Imperadori's laboratory and co+labo have started collaboration, which led to Strategic Partnership between our two universities in the fields relate to production of space.Besides delivering this double lecture about PoliMi's important experiments with sustainable campus, and design innovations at the recently concluded EXPO2015 in Milano, Professors Grecchi and Imperadori will engage in discussions with Darko Radović and several other members of Smart Communities research cluster at Keio, in preparation for the forthcoming visit of our team to Politecnico.

The visit from University of Cyprus brought to co+labo a very interesting lecture by professors Maria Hajosoteriou and Angela Kyracou-Petrou, and a series of site collaborative visits and discussions between co+labo students and their colleagues from Nicosia.Particularly intense was Tuesday. The day started by co+labo's Sano Satoshi's presentation of the recent projects from Eureka.

Maria Hajosoteriou and Angela Petrou presented their research and research-led teaching, which focuses at mapping and ideas about alternative, better and (un)likely futures for some extremely complex - rich and beautiful, but at the same time intense and sad - urban situations in Cyprus.

Joint teams visited some of the co+labo research sites, exploring together places as diverse as Kichijoji, Musashi Kosugi, Jiyugaoka, Kitajukken Gawa, Kikuzaka, Isezakicho, and discussing those diverse urbanities of Tokyo there, on the sites...

... and taking discussions to izakayas ...

and then back to co+labo and Keio's Yagami Camus:

... ending with discussions about future collaboration between Keio, co+laboradović and University of Cyprus, Nicosia and - a group photo.

15 November 2015

On Thursday 19 November, Simone Garagnani, Keio Top Global University scholar from the University of Bologna, a co+labo guest in 2015, will deliver his second lecture - Our BIMpact of the Future. Please come to this lecture and join the question time, which will focus at crucial dimensions of our current and future collaboration in the field of of capturing complex experiential spatial phenomena.

co+labo radović another Theories of Architecture lecture in organisation of co+labo

On Tuesday 17 November co+labois organising a third in the series of Theory of Architecture and Urban Designguest lectures in 2015. This Tuesday, the guests are going to be Angela Kyriacou-Petrou and Maria Hajisoteriou from the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. If you are not far from Yagami Campus on Tuesday, please join us at this lecture.

Maria and Angela are bringing along a group of their students, who will be over the next three days be working with co+labo on discovering and better understanding of some of the subtlest dimension of urban quality in some parts of Tokyo which are at our focus in 2015/16.

November and December co+labo pitch continues. On 12.11, an inspirational Luisa Bravo's lecture which brought forward often neglected political dimensions of the urban on which co+labo keenly insists, was followed by research presentations of co+laboassociates (Jessica Pineda, UNU), PhD (Paula Jaen, Vedrana Ikalović and Marco Capitanio) and Masters students Roxane Czarnobroda and Tomotake Miyagaki) and rich discussion.

On Wednesday, Simone Garagnani and Luisa Bravo have been taken to the sites of some of co+labo research projects - Kitajukken (Simone, Luisa, Sato, Vedrana, Ito, Yamaguchi-san/Mitsukura Lab) ..

11 November 2015

co+labo radovićintense November: Gehl's+Bologna+Beirut@Keio+all@izakaya: snaps 1,2,3Traditionally, November and December at co+labo are the months of intensive research. Over those two months, various co+labo activities conducted over the calendar and academic year need to be wrapped up and presented, and new reserach and design-reserach projects conceptualised and initiated. These days, co+laboradović hosts simultanrously a number of regular co+labo accomplices, friends and associates from Tokyo and distinguished international visitors, who are helping us think and act better. Separate blog entries present some of those efforts, such as lectures by our Top Global University visiting academic Simone Garagnani (University of Bologna), Luisa Bravo (Lebanese American University), David Sim (Gehl Architects, Copenhagen) and his team. Their combined presence and contributions prove that we are trying to live what we preach and explore - intensity; urban, architectural, intellectual.

co+labo students with David Sim, Scott Przibella and Malin Nilsson (Gehl Architects, Copenhagen) during the fieldwork at several central locations in Tokyo, trying to feel the pulse of the city and to identify where our combined knowledges and experiences could make difference (with Roxane exploring the alternative ways to use public space)

Simone Garagnani's first lecture at Keio University's ... and the follow-up co+laboizakaya discussion

guided visits to some of the sites in Tokyo at which co+labo students are doing their research and design-reserach investigations

co+labo radović co+labo intense November continues with a research seminar

On 12 November, co+labo activities continue with a research seminar, which focuses at our current PhD projects and Masters Theses which are due 2016, but which are pushing forward some of our key research challenges, such as dealing with coordination of measurable and non-measurable, numerical and textual expressions of spatial quality, and our underlining ethos of combined environmental and cultural sustainability.

As always, if you are close to Yagami Campus on Thursday, 13.11 at 14.00, feel free to join co+labo discussions. One of co+laboeducational agendas is to advance critical thinking and polemological atmosphere.

06 November 2015

On 12 November co+labois organising a special lecture by Luisa Bravo, an academic, Charter member and President of City Space Architecture, the non-profit cultural association from Bologna. As a multidisciplinary research platform, CSA involves more than one hundred affiliated members all over the world and - Darko is the Honorary Member.Luisa also coordinatesMaPS. Mastering Public Space, a collaborative research network on cities and urbanity,Pop-up City, a photography research project on instant urbanity andUrban Visions. Beyond the Ideal City, a cinematography competition for short films - all promoted and supported by City Space Architecture.